The Future of Nanobiotech Predicted

Quadraginta writes "Aharon Hauptman and Yair Sharan of the Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting (ICTAF) at Tel Aviv University recently presented the results of a survey of 139 researchers on the future of nanobiotech. The presentation itself is only available as a PDF file, but there is a brief news announcement from the ICTAF. Interestingly, Hauptman and Sharan asked for -- and got -- specific predictions from the experts of the year in which various nanotech marvels will appear. For example, the experts say we can look forward to biosensors capable of detecting a single molecule by 2015, the direct construction of artificial human organs by 2020, and the use of nanomachines inside the body for diagnosis and therapy by 2025."

Comments

I've always wondered

[quokkapox]

Why do we humans keep trying to predict our technological future? So-called (and self-proclaimed) experts have been trying for decades, and they aren't doing much better than psychics. Or are there wildly successful visionaries with high accuracy of whose publications we are now unaware? I'd love to see a discussion of futurists' predictions that HAVE been surprisingly accurate.

It seems pointless to make specific predictions, such as Technology X in Year Y. Might it not be better to simply steer our unwieldy technology, as well as we can, in a generally sensible direction?

Re:10, 15, 20 years away?

[Scarblac]

I don't agree at all. Human brains work by neurons firing in specific patterns, in specific ways, in extremely huge numbers and with complicated interneuron connections. There is no quick fix to knowing how the brain works, since it's not a simple thing.

That said, even if the brain relied on some quantum effect, I find the idea that just building something completely different that also relies on a quantum effect (a quantum computer) and just letting it run (doing what?) to be pretty bizarre.

The main problem to solving "true AI" remains _defining true AI_. You can't solve a problem if nobody can say what the actual problem is.